Monday, March 2, 2009

Four days from bliss to bust

Skiing this weekend was about as bad as it's been all year. We did have one rainy day back in December where the skiing itself was nice, but the rain made it no fun to be outside.

This weekend, we skied on ice. Lots and lots of slick, glare ice. The ungroomed trails were very firm and tough to navigate. Some skiers braved those trails for the weekend, but most of the traffic was on slick groomed trails. Those kind of conditions make skiing a dangerous sport. On Saturday, another instructor was hit by a skier. That skier was moving so fast that he hit a student, lost his skis, and then flew into the instructor.

One of the girls in my group was almost hit by an out of control skier, who then tried to blame the near-collision on my student. He was clearly at fault (see The Skier's Responsibility Code) and I tried to politely make this clear to him. He had violated both of the first two rules of the code. I hate to get into a disagreement with a customer, but my primary job is to ensure the safety of my students.

Yesterday, the older sister of one of my students was run over by a snowboarder and had to visit the medical clinic. I was on edge all weekend long, doing everything I could to keep my students safe. However, weekends like this are common in the northeast and we had been lucky so far this season.

It's snowing right now, but the bulk of the big storm that is hitting the east coast will pass to the east of the VT ski resorts. We'll get some snow, but not as much as we need to recover from last Friday's rain.

This week, my plan is to run easily for an hour both today and tomorrow. Then, I have a skiing clinic on Wednesday and Thursday. Friday is a planned rest day before the snowshoe marathon on Saturday. Sunday, if my feet aren't too swollen from the marathon, I'll teach skiing.

But, I seem to be coming down with a cold, which puts a lot of the week's activities in jeopardy. I can't remember the last time I got this far into ski season without getting sick, but my luck seems to have run out. A lot of the instructors are sick right now. As the ski season wears on, and the instructors have frequent close contact with many guests and with each other, it seems like illness is inevitable. Hopefully, I'll be over this quickly and won't miss any more training time than necessary.